Arresting fruit for the Expo

Last week the local "head washing" store around the corner from my house was mysteriously transformed. Previously it was a gloomy living room lit by the usual creepy pink lights, staffed by young women in white satin dresses who stared glumly at passers-by. Some of them embroidered while they waited. So much for life in the big city, and now they are gone, replaced by a selection of shoes gleaming under fluorescent lights. Sign of the downturn? Perhaps, but it's more likely they were pushed out by the Shanghai Expo's praetorian guard, the City Management Bureau. The people the City Management Bureau employs are, to my view, the underpaid, underqualified version of the municipal police - the mall security guards of China. Many of them are very young, and all of them surly. The most public part of their job is moving in on street stalls, noodle carts and balloon ...